


A Group Effort

by The_Sickfic_Sideblog



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Head Cold, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, Sneezing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 05:37:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9867749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Sickfic_Sideblog/pseuds/The_Sickfic_Sideblog
Summary: Lance catches the common cold, of which there are no proven ways to cure. The rest of the paladins think otherwise.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing a cold-based fic, rather than fever- or stomach-based. Have mercy on me and the phonetic spelling of sneezes.

It’s silent in space. It is a vacuum, there’s no medium for sound to travel through. Even while in their lions, practicing maneuvering through fodder the castleship threw at them, the paladins remained silent and focused.

It didn’t last long.

_“Hh’ktCHhsx!”_

“Alright. That’s it. I’m done. I’m going back to the castle.”

The other four paladins sounded off in Keith’s ear.

“Wait, why?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s happening?”

“What is it, Keith?”

“I am _done_ listening to Lance sneeze into the intercom.”

Lance ungracefully wiped his nose from under the helmet, “Listening to you is no walk in the park either.”

A green waveform popped up on Lance’s interface, “Keith’s right. You sound pretty awful. And...it is kind of gross to hear someone sneeze right in your ear.”

“It’s just the common cold, Pidge. Everyone gets them, I’ll be fine.”

A yellow waveform joined the green one, “Yeah, but you still sound pretty gross.”

And finally, a purple one, “Also, the ‘common cold’ doesn't exist in space. None of us had it that you could get it from. We should probably check this out more.”

When Shiro put it that way, Lance actually felt some concern. It didn’t feel any worse than a normal cold on Earth - one that everyone gets millions of times. He was still about to function like a normal person and only had to carry around some tissues and strange Altean cough drops. To the Alteans’ credit, their red and purple cough drops were _way_ better than the ones on Earth. He could eat them like candy.

But Shiro’s comments planted worry in his head. It was just a head cold....right? It would pass in just a few more days... _right_?

Lance sighed and turned the Blue Lion around, “Alright, I’ll head back early. You guys finish the drill so Allura doesn’t tear us a new one.”

“We’ll see you back there soon.”

* * *

 When Lance docked his lion and stepped out, Coran was the first one to greet him.

_“LANCE GET INTO THE HEALING POD!”_

The Blue Paladin locked his joints, making a stiff barrier between him and the open healing pod. Coran was a lot stronger than he thought.

“I'm alright, Coran! It’s a just a head cold!”

“I don't care what it is, you're leaking brain fluid from your facial orifices! Get in the pod!”

“I told you, it's just snot! Mucus? And tears after sneezing so much? Stop it, I'm... _hh... h’cckXTCHn!_ I’m fine!”

“There you go again! You’ll lose all your brain fluid! You didn’t tell me humans get diseases as drastic as this!”

_“It’s not brain fluid!”_

Coran wasn’t listening. In a final attempt to save the paladin from his early demise, he threw himself at Lance, toppling them both into the open healing pod. Before Coran could scramble up and hit the controls, Shiro stepped into the room.

“Lance, where did you-” he eyed the situation, “Um...”

Coran got to his feet, pinning Lance in the pod, “Shiro, hit the controls! We have to get Lance healing before his skull drains completely!”

Shiro made no movement towards the controls. Instead, he casually walked over to the Altean and tossed him to the side with little effort.

“Coran, his skull isn’t draining. We think he just has a cold. It’s a human illness that’s very common and completely harmless,” Shiro offered a hand to help Lance up, “Were you able to use Pidge’s Diagnostic System, or whatever that thing is?”

Lance was hauled to his feet, and coughed a few times, “No, Coran got to me first.”

“And right I did! If you had actually been losing brain fluid, you would’ve perished by now!” Coran blushed a bit as he straightened his coat, “I may have been...a bit overhasty in my judgment, though.”

“Which is exactly why Pidge made that code. There are too many foreign space viruses to actually be sure of what we have.” Shiro said, leading the way to Pidge’s workshop.

Lance smiled at the Altean, “It’s alright, Coran. If I were _actually_ leaking my brains out, you’d be the first person I’d go to.”

That seemed to make Coran stand a little taller.

Pidge’s device was something she made in her free time after what the team called “The Great Plague of Week 15”. After fifteen healthy weeks in space, they landed on a planet that showed them no mercy. Everyone seemed to catch some sort of alien virus, sending the team into a mass panic about what to do and if they were going to survive. Pidge was able to make her way through the castleship’s data logs, and find something of a Universal WebMD that the Altean doctors used as reference before the Galra attacked. Since the Alteans were a diplomatic race, they gathered information from other planets and species as well, creating the ultimate database of medical knowledge.

It was still a work in progress. The Altean files were, of course, in Altean, and Pidge had to upload what Earth knowledge she could. She was still working on a reasonable search engine, and the program still worked like WebMD, often citing space cancer as the cause to a simple twitch. But it was better than being completely in the dark about strange symptoms. Even though none of the diseases the paladins caught in Week 15 were fatal, they all claim that Pidge saved their lives. She didn’t say otherwise.

When Lance entered his data, a few options came up. One was the common cold, as everyone suspected. Another came up in a language Pidge hadn’t translated yet. The last one was the equivalent to Balmeran Sickle-Cell Disease, but Shiro immediately out ruled it. In earnest, there was a fraction of a chance that it _was_ Balmeran Sickle-Cell, but the Black Paladin didn’t want to cause any more panic that already ensued. After his encounter with Slav, he didn’t want to waste any more time with minuscule percentages and alternate universes.

By then, the rest of the paladins caught up and joined the three in the workshop. Hunk burst in first, looking as if he was on the verge of tears.

“Is Lance gonna die?!”

Shiro frowned, “What? No, he’s perfectly fine. Why did-”

“Keith said something about a killer space flu.” Pidge sighed. She adjusted her glasses and looked at the lines of code on the screen, “Did it give you any kind of space cancer again?”

“Not this time. It’s just a head cold.”

Hunk ran up to the Blue Paladin and embraced him in a huge hug, “Oh thank God! I thought we were gonna have to find a new paladin! I’m so glad you just have a gross cold instead of something serious!” Hunk paused, then quickly peeled himself away from Lance, “Please don’t infect me.”

“I’m not going to-...to infect.... _ah-ktCHN!_ ”

Everyone immediately took a step backward. At least he managed to cover his mouth this time.

“So now that we know it’s just a cold, how do we get him to stop sneezing?” Keith said, arms crossed as usual, “Or coughing? Or anything?”

“There’s not exactly a cure for the common cold, Keith,” Pidge replied from behind her computer, “That’s why we still have it. It keeps evolving different strands to resist our antibodies.”

“ _Bullshit_ , there's no cure!” Hunk took Lance by the hand and started dragging him to the kitchen, “My Mama used to make the best soup for colds, and me and my cousins would get over it within a day. C’mon, let's see what I can do.”

* * *

 After hours of bowl clattering and scavenging, Hunk found what he deemed necessary. A half-hour after that, a bowl of steaming soup was placed before Lance.

“Not exactly Mama Garrett’s recipe, but it's close enough for being in space if I do say so myself.” Hunk grinned.

The other paladins looked on in awe. Despite all the Altean ingredients, the soup truly looked like something from Earth. Lance assumed that it smelled like home as well, but all sense of smell had been lost a long time ago. He hoped he could still taste it.

Because Hunk had made three pots of soup, he dished some up for everyone else. Shiro tried to reason with him, telling him only one pot of soup was probably enough for Lance, but no one wanted to step into Hunk’s kitchen and defy him. In the end, they were incredibly grateful Hunk made so much.

“Did you put cocaine in this?” Pidge asked between her second and third bowl, “I feel like I’ll go into withdrawal without it.”

Hunk seemed to actually consider it, “I’m pretty sure I didn’t, but all the ingredients are written in Altean.”

“You realize we can never go back to food goo again?” Keith had given up on using the spoon and settled for drinking it straight out of the bowl.

With all the compliments, Lance was disappointed that he couldn’t taste it. He could detect a hint of _something_ , but couldn’t identify it from either his cloudy head or the fact that it was a completely foreign ingredient. Still, there was something about the way it soothed his throat and warmed his stomach that _felt_ delicious.

Lance managed to eat an entire bowl without speaking or even looking up. He only paused to make sure he didn’t spit soup everywhere when he sneezed. When he finally did look up, he met Hunk’s eagerly awaiting eyes and grinned.

“This is the best soup I’ve ever had...”

_Oh god._

He sounded fine until that exact moment. Now his words were absolutely riddled with congestion as if he plugged his nose to speak. He couldn’t even take a full breath through his nose. Keith and Pidge’s giggles echoed in the distance as he tried to stifle a sneeze into his elbow.

“Ugh...I think it’s finally catching up to me...”

“It caught you two days ago when you started sneezing all the time!” Keith protested, still trying to hide his laughter.

“But now I actually _feel_ sick...fuck....”

“The soup’s really good, Hunk. Your mother knew what she was doing,” Shiro smiled, “But it seems like Lance is really congested. Soup isn't very effective for a stuffed-up nose. I have an idea about something else.”

* * *

“...are you sure this works, Shiro?”

Lance was staring down a bowl of almost boiling water, a large towel draped around his neck. Within the time it took for Shiro to heat the water and get a towel, Lance had completely ruined the sleeve of his jacket from wiping his nose. Pidge had absolutely none of it. She confiscated the jacket and replaced it with a large box of tissues, claiming they’d have to burn the jacket to get rid of all the germs. Lance may or may not have actually screeched at the idea.

The Black Paladin nodded to Lance’s skepticism about the steam bowl.

“It used to clear up my sinuses all the time in the Garrison. It's just like one of those sauna rooms, except just for your face. It can't hurt to try.”

A sauna sounded wonderful. Lance put that high on his mental list of what to do when they got home, next to showing Coran and Allura a museum. He sniffed and draped the town over his head, trapping the steam in a small bubble of warmth and humidity.

“So we're going to suffocate Lance instead?” Keith said. To Lance, his voice was muffled by the now-damp towel. Shiro was right - it felt like a hot sauna. If nothing else, this would at least open his pores up and help his skin.

“We're not suffocating him. The steam should open everything up in his nose and throat,” Shiro responded, “Doing alright under there?”

Lance gave a weak thumbs up.

“So we're going to make him produce more mucus? Which will make him sneeze more?” Hunk said through spoonfuls of soup.

“It doesn’t produce more, it just moves things around, I guess? It worked for me, I never questioned why.”

“I don’t think it’s working,” Lance muttered from under the towel, nose still completely clogged, “But it feels really good...”

“Uh-uh,” Keith pulled the towel off Lance’s head and took him by the arm, “If we’re going to solve this, we’re going to solve it with something I know will work.”

* * *

“You've got to be kidding me.”

“Do you want to stop sneezing or not?”

Lance eyed the contraption suspiciously.  He'd heard of this kind of treatment before but never saw himself doing it, much less Keith. He also never would’ve guessed Keith constructed a makeshift Neti Pot on the castleship.

When Keith explained how it worked, Hunk and Pidge decided that they didn’t need to see it in action. Shiro didn’t particularly want to see it either, but he figured he should stay to stop the two from strangling each other.

“Doesn't it...hurt? Like jumping into water the wrong way and it gets up your nose?” Lance asked. It was intimidating, to say the least. No one liked that feeling.

“No, the saline balances the pH in your sinuses. It just feels weird. Like water up your nose without the burning sensation.”

Lance looked at the Red Paladin with skepticism.

“What? It was really dusty out in the desert, this helped. I hate feeling like I can’t breathe.”

“This thing has your desert boogers on it?”

“You think I wouldn’t wash it?!” Keith took a breath, and tried not to facepalm, “It’ll work. Just keep your head down and don’t breathe in.”

It wasn’t exactly a _traumatic_ experience, but it did leave Lance worse off than before. The warm solution did exactly what it was supposed to do, and cleared out most of Lance’s sinuses. Neither he nor Keith knew exactly what went wrong, but Lance was coughing and sputtering over the sink with fear in his eyes.

“You do this to yourself?!”

“No, I do it the right way! I told you not to breathe in!”

“I didn’t breathe in!”

Shiro stood from his seat and put a hand on Lance’s back, “Alright, that’s enough! Are you alright, Lance?”

“My nose was violated by the ocean! _H’iKTsh!’tsh! H-’khSHt’NGsT!_ There’s water still up my fucking nose! _N’gsCH!”_

Keith blinked slowly, sighed, and left the room. The thought that his fool-proof method made Lance worse had driven him to the brink. Lance didn’t see him until his cold had almost completely calmed down.

Shiro offered Lance a towel, “Try to blow it out of your nose. Does it hurt?”

Lance pressed the towel against his face and blew as hard as he could. It didn’t make a difference.

“It doesn’t hurt, but it feels really weird!” He even tried jumping up and down and shaking his head, as if to get water out of his ears. The Black Paladin sighed. At least Lance still had his energy.

“Okay. Whenever you feel... _composed_ enough, we should see Pidge. She probably has something that’ll help you.”

* * *

“The others had good ideas for temporary relief of the symptoms. But they won't actually help get rid of the virus,” Pidge said, “Really, the best things that are gonna help are vitamins and sleep.”

Lance nodded. It was the most logical thing he had heard all day. The three were in Pidge’s workshop, watching her fiddle with codes on the computer and hand-translate Altean on a pad of paper at the same time. But she paused to pull out a bottle of pills and pour Lance a glass of water.

The sick paladin reached out for the glass but paused when he felt the familiar tickle in the back of his nose again.

_“Ah'shkCH!“_

Pidge responded without thinking about it, “Bless you,” and handed him the glass. She dropped the pills in his other hand and sat back at her desk.

“How did you get vitamins?” Shiro asked, “I was in charge of the second space mall trip, there weren’t any pills we bought.”

“Lance taught me a... _creative_ way to get some money. I bought them myself. I figured they’d be good to have on hand.”

Lance smiled fondly at their fountain-diving adventures. He downed each pill with ease and chased them with water. Shiro ignored the comment about creative ways of obtaining money. They weren’t being hunted down, that was the only thing that mattered.

“I'm still wondering where this came from,” Pidge thought out loud, “It really is just the common cold. I'm pretty sure no one brought it on the Blue Lion when we first blasted off, but if someone did, no wonder you were the one to get it first.”

Lance put the glass back down on Pidge’s desk, “At this point, I don't care where the quiznak it came from. I want it gone.”

Shiro patted his back and stood up, “Well, you heard her. Go get some rest. I’ll wake you up before dinner.”

* * *

In the end, Lance wasn’t quite sure what cured him. All of his friends’ methods helped in their own way (excepting Coran). Or perhaps the cold just cleared up on its own. Regardless, Lance was happy he could breathe through his nose and not sneeze or cough up a lung every other sentence.

The other paladins were incredibly grateful too. It was a relief to hear Lance speak normally again and not have a wet sneeze in their intercom.

Until they tried to run the training again.

_“hh’txCHH’uh!”_

Lance immediately put his hands up in surrender, even though no one else could see him. “It wasn’t me! I’m sterile, I’m cured!”

For a few moments, there was silence in space again. Until a purple waveform popped up on everyone’s interface.

“Hunk...” Shiro sniffed, “You should probably make more soup...”


End file.
